


Batman Saves Rachel Dawes

by scioscribe



Category: Community
Genre: Depression, Friendship, Gen, Psychoanalysis, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-13 23:16:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mid-season three, Abed discovers and addresses Jeff’s ongoing depression using Twitter, Batman analogies, media analysis, buttered noodles, and shadow puppets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Batman Saves Rachel Dawes

**Author's Note:**

> Because season three didn't have a "Contemporary American Poultry" or a "Critical Film Studies" for Jeff and Abed, and also, wasn't Jeff sort of depressed at the beginning of season three?

**Abed Nadir** @ AbedApex: _Resurrecting Horsebot-3000 by exclusive demand: what Fox didn’t do with Firefly._ #horsebotstillflying

 

Abed liked Twitter because everything was distilled to its essence and no essence had more than one hundred forty characters.

“Also, since it allows for instantaneous recordkeeping and communication, I have access to my previous thoughts and exploits in a minute-by-minute outlay if I use searchable hashtags.”

“Abed,” Jeff said, “I _have_ a Twitter account. You don’t have to sell it to me.”

“Actually, your Twitter use has declined lately. That’s what prompted me to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the medium.”

Abed was familiar all canonical iterations of Batman, but he preferred the dark, gravelly-voiced, and psychologically realistic iteration introduced to film and codified by Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale. Abed wasn’t Batman, but if he were Batman, Jeff would be Rachel Dawes as played by Maggie Gyllenhal. Lawyer, sort of shrill but secretly frazzled, prone to giving speeches, possibly in need of being rescued despite ostensible competence.

Unfortunately, Rachel died in _The Dark Knight_ , the middle installment of the series where the plotlines and characters all took a dark turn in an already dark universe. Since their third year together seemed intent on doing the same, Abed decided to keep a closer eye on Jeff, but so far Jeff hadn’t gotten engaged to any aspiring politicians with strong jaw-lines and optimistic slogans.

Abed also liked Twitter because posting frequency was an emotional indicator that could be examined and statistically analyzed without reference to facial expressions.

The same thing was true of buttered noodle consumption.

“Do you want some more buttered noodles?”

“Here’s a tip,” Jeff said. His inflection was sarcastic, but he still had the bowl held out anyway. Abed didn’t know whether he wanted to fill it with anything or not: it was empty, but maybe he wanted it that way. “When you invite someone over for dinner, try to have something more than pasta with dairy on it.”

“You said you liked buttered noodles. You also said you liked Twitter. But you don’t want the things that you like anymore. Like us. The study group.”

Jeff said, “Wow, you really take it personally when someone says something about your cooking.”

“I looked at #AnniesMove. You weren’t there, because you were at the mall, being blackmailed by the Dean into making a karaoke video of ‘Kiss From a Rose.’”

“Maybe you could connect my lack of enthusiasm for Twitter with a lack of appreciation for the kindness and empathy shown by all of you in sharing that _particular_ tweet with all of Greendale.”

“No, your Twitter use had already started to fall.” He still didn’t know if Jeff wanted more buttered noodles or not. Jeff kept the bowl extended even though prolonged arm extension with disproportionate weight allocation had the potential to strain his wrist: it had happened to Constable Reggie when he was forced to hold the quantum spanner for three days and two continents. “You stopped tagging us as frequently, too. And you didn’t help Annie move, even though you have both friendly and romantic connections to her.”

Jeff shrugged. “Boxes are heavy and moving is boring, _much like_ analyzing my Twitter use. Let’s watch _*batteries not included_.”

“You didn’t help Annie move because boxes are heavy and moving is boring?”

“Yes.”

Abed tilted his head. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Really. _You’re_ going to try to second-guess emotional motivations and nuances.”

“I don’t have to. After I remembered you weren’t there for any of #AnniesMove, I started to look at where you were, and what you were doing when you were there. You tried to destroy the study room table with an axe, you addressed uncomfortable subtext in your relationship with Annie, you made a speech about how everyone is motivated by fear and needing to be loved, you killed Pierce’s father, and you experienced a Method acting crisis moment while portraying the Dean in an out-of-control community college advertisement. Then for a while, you were obsessed with foosball. And you cried when Horsebot-3000 died, even though he was a shadow puppet of a robotic copy of an emotionally unavailable unicorn, and therefore even more distant than the character in the story who was previously the most distant.”

Jeff said, “But he went up into the stars.” The bowl dangled a little bit from his fingers, like he was going to drop it.

Abed thought he understood now, so he put more buttered noodles in it, took it out of Jeff’s hand to reduce wrist strain, and put it on the table so it would be easy to reach.

“Why didn’t you help Annie move?”

Jeff said, “Sometimes I don’t really want to be around people. But I don’t like not being with them, either. And I don’t like being with them and then being someone that I don’t want to be, like a crazy person who smashes tables with fire axes or thinks all black people look alike.”

“Yeah, that was pretty embarrassing.”

“Everyone knows what they expect from you,” Jeff said. “No one expects you to say the right thing. I don’t mean you don’t, in fact I’d say that you’re batting way above-average on a team that contains Britta, Pierce, and Shirley on a post-Sunday high, but no one wants you to save anybody, or make everybody fine, or do anything except be _Abed_.”

“I do get to have a breakdown once a school year. Maybe this is yours.”

“I can’t have a breakdown, Abed. That’s sort of my entire point.”

“Well, any sensible format would dictate that you’re our leading man. Charismatic, sarcastic ex-lawyer with an abrasive demeanor but a secret heart of gold. Racially accessible to mainstream audiences. You’re supposed to be a blank slate where people can project what they want to see, and what people usually want is a hero, at least to start out with. Unless we were on cable. Then you could have greater moral complexity, and probably some stubble.”

Jeff sighed. “Yeah, Abed.”

“But we’ve outgrown that. We’re more of an ensemble format now. And quirky enough that we can never go mainstream, so you don’t have to worry about whether we’re normal or not. Maybe not being normal would be okay for a while, even for you.”

Jeff looked at him.

“Besides,” Abed said, “a show with a leading man who occasionally turns into a robotic copy of an emotionally unavailable unicorn would probably have a pretty strong cult following.”

“Horsebot-3000 died. I’m pretty sure no one wants to be compared to a dead shadow puppet character who’s also a robotic—I can’t remember everything you just said.”

“Exact phrase repetition isn’t everyone’s strong suit. We’re not on _The Middleman_. But Horsebot-3000 isn’t dead in the Dreamatorium. Inspector Spacetime could go back and save him from the Blorgons.”

Inspector Spacetime (and _Inspector Spacetime_ ) was always bringing people back from the dead. Once, giant time pterodactyls tried to destroy the fabric of time and space because of it, but they could be destroyed by the power of love, so Abed wasn’t too worried. He gave Jeff some more buttered noodles, which he didn’t understand, since Jeff already had some.

Jeff watched them slide off the spoon. He said, “Have you ever noticed that all of our deep heart-to-heart conversations involve food?”

“Food automatically facilitates conversations, because you can always talk about what you’re eating. And, cross-culturally, eating with someone shows a basic level of trust and intimacy.”

“You _actually_ learned something in anthropology.”

“We used that page of the textbook to make the wallpaper for our diorama about a world overrun by logorrhea. See?” He took out his phone and showed Jeff his Twitter feed with #diorama. “Pierce said ‘logorrhea’ sounded like ‘diarrhea.’”

“Unsurprisingly.”

“There’s a picture of you smiling.”

“You took a picture of me smiling for your Twitter account?”

“I’m trying to document facial expressions so I can recognize them better. And I need to know how to impersonate you for Dreamatorium simulations.”

“I think Twitter has an untapped market in the psychoanalysis field,” Jeff said. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at the picture of himself. “We were just making a diorama?”

“Yep. You didn’t have to do anything besides hand Annie a glue-gun. And we had a good day.”

Jeff said, “You’ll really bring back Horsebot-3000?”

“He was one of my favorite characters,” Abed said.

He went into the Dreamatorium and brought back Horsebot-3000 from the brink of death in the Blorgon attack. He came back. “Look,” he said, and he went into the blanket fort bedroom, turned on the desk lamp, and held up the Horsebot-3000 puppet. “All better.” He made Horsebot-3000 dance around with the princess for a while before he figured the psychological point had been made enough that he could go back to eating dinner, since he’d had to stop halfway through to try to heal Jeff with friendship.

He sat down in his chair.

“You’re out of buttered noodles again,” Abed said.

“Yeah.” Jeff’s eyes were shiny. “They’re actually really good.”

“We have a lot of them,” Abed said, and got Jeff some more.


End file.
